‘Clean Spirit’: Distilling, Modernity, and the Ugandan State, 1950–86

Abstract

Abstract This article explores official attitudes to illicit distillation in Uganda in the mid-twentieth century. Tracing continuities in rhetoric which are strikingly revealed by two reports on the problem of illicit distillation, the article offers a discussion of the development of illicit distillation and argues that for officials in the late-colonial and independent state, this became a symbol of the potential dangers of modernity. Governmental schemes for the production of a ‘clean’ distilled drink, on the other hand, asserted the ability of the state to provide a safe route to modernity. The state was challenged in this field – with such challenges made possible by the patrimonial nature of authority, which has constantly subverted the pretensions of the state – yet policy on the production of spirits has remained an important area for the discursive creation of legitimacy.